Star Fox Adventures 'Options Menu/Krazoa Palace'

[Schmancy]

I've got two versions of this to post at the moment--they both have different things going on with balance, but I've heard this so many times that I'm used to it and I'm not really sure what sounds better or worse anymore, so I need some other ears. It's split into halves, with the first focusing on the Options Menu music and the second on Krazoa Palace. Here's the source material, if you aren't familiar with them:

Options Menu

Krazoa Palace

The theme that comes in at around 0:17 isn't from the games, and initially is meant to be pretty quiet--it's meant more for foreshadowing than to overpower anything else. I might pan it out to the sides to make that more clear, but it reproduces itself at the end of the tune to tie things together, along with some of the other themes from the Options Menu. In any case, there seems to me to be a little too much stuff going on in the first half, but I've got no head to decide what should be taken out.

Okay, the mix:

Version One (Probably a little better)

Version Two (Probably a little worse)

Any tips?

[Xero]

I think you're right about the first being better than the second. In the second version, I found the hi-hat to be a little overpowering. It definitely made the melody much harder to hear. Overall though, I found this remix to be a fairly excellent blend of the themes with enough variation on the originals to keep it interesting. Keep up the great work!

[Rozovian]

Panning is a bit annoying in the intro, there's nothing in the center, and most of everything's in the left channel. Bad. The writing is great, tho. Varied, tied to source but not too closely, never repetitive.

You're missing a drum serving as a snare, it bothered me around 1:30 when the drums come in more. From there to 1:56 or so, you could use a snare-ish drum.

I think you could squeeze in a dB or two by using a limiter, or better yet a multiband compressor. That'd give your low range more punch, the mids and highs more bite. Depending on the tool, you might be able to make some fine adjustments to the overall EQ, but even if you can't, you'll at least be able to push the volume up a little without clipping.

Good stuff.

[Schmancy]

Haha, my technology is horrid. I'm using just a Roland keyboard that can record about sixteen tracks played from whatever patches it has, and then I feed that through a sound card into my computer. There isn't a lot of capability on that to do much sound work. But I'll see what can be tweaked--I'm sure there's some software out there that can manage the stuff once it's on a PC.